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Memorable Quotes: OS Special Effects
With a brilliant flash, the Galore rocks to starboard and then explodes in spectacular fashion. The ensuing shock wave rattles the Pulsar Skate, heaving her toward Nephthys on a collision course. - 1999, destruction of the Galore. ---- A technician saunters into the docking bay, carrying a lunchbox in one hand and a satchel full of tools in the other. The technician, a human male with scrubby blonde hair and rather sunken blue eyes bobs past the crowd, whistling as he goes. The technician reaches an erected scaffolding on the starboard side of the docking bay, slings the satchel over his shoulder and begins to climb toward a work platform that grants access to the rafters and the electronic conduits arrayed there. The technician's merry whistling continues, echoing through the bay as he climbs higher and higher. Finally, the technician reaches the platform. He sets down his satchel of tools, then plops down on the platform's edge, legs dangling over. He pops open his lunchbox and ceases whistling. He mutters something about tuna salad...again...and then grudgingly takes out the sandwich, along with a small thermos containing a refreshing beverage. The technician munches on his sandwich, gazing out over his kingdom...the docking bay. And it was good. Well, for tuna salad. Something seems to catch the technician's attention, off to the left. He glances that way, sandwich in hand. His brow furrows, as if pondering an engineering problem just out of grasp. The technician glances to the right, then back to the left. "That ain't right," he mutters. Obviously the sort unable to leave a problem unsolved in favor of food, he sets the sandwich back in the box and gets to his feet, moving in a crouch-waddle toward the left. The technician's eyes go back to a spotlight that is directed at the spot he's obsessing over. A spot that clearly has a shadow where there should be none. The strange shadow then spills...if that's the word for it...down the bulkhead to fill the one cast by the technician. He scratches his head. "What the...?" Curious, lunch completely forgotten about now, the technician reaches toward the bulkhead with a bony finger. The technician's shadow suddenly begins to leak...if that's the word for it...along his finger and up his arm - evoking a startled shout as it ripples darkly toward his shoulder, then climbs his neck and cloaks his head. He throws his hands to his head, screaming, and staggers back. He knocks his lunchbox off the scaffold, and the box tumbles - clattering on the deck far below. - 1999 The flush has now spread to Lullabelle's entire body, the pupils of her staring eyes dilating to huge proportions. The shivering has now reached epic proportions, violent enough that they might actually be destructive in and of themselves - then suddenly she utters a whistling, gurgling shriek of sound that seems to come from lungs full of water and collapses in on herself. A positive froth of blood gouts from between her lips and she gurgles harriedly before going into a series of convulsions that almost seem to tear her apart. Then - suddenly - her head lolls limply to one side. - 2001 Eaglefeather sets his spoon down on the plate, washing down another bite with his beverage. He tilts his head back as he does so, and continues to lean backward as his eyes roll back in his head and the liquid sloshes on his tunic. The cup and cane clatter on the floor as Eaglefeather sprawls unconscious. The serving girl screams. - 2001, death of the Qua elder. ---- A smallish cargo carrier careens in, nose scraping against the decking before it lifts off a bit, spins, and crashes through a bunch of recently unloaded cargo crates. Then, with sparks flying, it skids further across the deck before it's forward thrusters fire up, stopping it. - 2001. ---- "One other thing," Neidermeyer begins, but he's interrupted by a sound like the buzzing of a bee swarm coming from outside in the corridor. Into the conference room whooshes a trio of small craft that look for all the world like starship models of some kind. Bobbing and weaving past the surprised-looking thugs who try to intercept them, the ships and their tiny assortment of bristling weapons arc around toward the head of the conference table. Nikolai opens his eyes wide at the appearance of the tiny ships, "Vhat is this!?" Montgomery gulps, stunned into silence and immobility, for the present time. Niesa pushes back from the table, easily slipping to her knees. Her smile, directed squarely at Neidermeyer, broadens just before her head slips below the table's mahogany surface. Valentine is on her feet immediately, cold blue eyes taking a quick circuit from the ships, to Neidermeyer, to the ships again. She is still for one long moment, posture balanced for a long quick motion forward, as if awaiting something. A tinny voice crackles from the speaker of the lead ship as it closes on Neidermeyer, who is getting to his feet and drawing his flechette pistol: "Halt! Colin Neidermeyer, for months you have hideously tortured Nemoni prisoners in your clutches. You will now answer for these atrocities." From her low crouch, the Timonae moves further down the table's length and peekes her head out for a better view of the ship. The other two Nemoni vessels arc around slowly, keeping their guns aimed at those assembled. Montgomery stays seated, eyeing the other vessels warily, his hands still resting on the table. His face is almost bloodless in fear and surprise. Neidermeyer scooches away from the head of the table, shoving Tony the Monobrow thug in front of him as he stands with his back to the Shadowheart cityscape. The Nemoni ships swing in unison to face Tony. Their weapon turrets begin to glow crimson. The lead vessel opens a set of bomb bay doors and from the bay descends a small guided missile launcher. At first, Tony is amused, a goofy grin on his face. Then comes the tinny voice again: "Mini-nuclear missile armed. Prepare to fire." Tony looks left. He looks right. He fixes his eyes on the missile. He grimaces and steps quickly to the left. That seems to be what Valentine was waiting for, her own pistol going untouched. She crouches, one motion tensing her legs and then sending her in a long dive for the rear of the Nemoni vessel that has its missile trained on Neidermeyer, red hair flying. You only live once, right? "Sonuvabitch!" Neidermeyer shouts, aiming his flechette pistol at Tony and squeezing the trigger. The Monobrow's head is shredded into exploding ribbons of flesh, hair, gray matter, blood and bone. His corpse thuds limply on the carpeted floor. Neidermeyer then swings the gun around toward the lead Nemoni vessel and growls, "Your turn, pipsqueak!" Valentine is, inexplicably, frozen in mid-air. Niesa ducks back under the table, pulling the pulse pistol from the back of her waistband. The noise of violence prompts a reaction from Montgomery, as he chooses this time to try and slip from his chair and under the table. Nikolai slides off his chair and dives under the table, "Madness!" "No," replies the tinny voice through the loudspeaker in the lead Nemoni ship. "Yours." And the guided missile fires its thrusters and launches toward Neidermeyer, just as he's firing off a shot with the flechette pistol. The missile, already armed, explodes inches away from the honcho before he finishes squeezing the trigger, creating a shock wave and a radioactive fireball. The blast causes Neidermeyer's shot to go wild, just missing Niesa and shredding the paneling on the wall behind her and to the left. The fireball swooms outward with a FOOMP!, giving Valentine a nasty sunburn and setting Neidermeyer's expensive silk suit aflame and hurling him backward through one of the plate glass windows. Lit up like a bizarre tiki torch, still gripping his flechette pistol, Neidermeyer shatters the window and plummets into the blue-purple night, falling fourteen floors to the pavement. - 2002 The Athena's spindrive is whirring to life just as Mazzonnoz kills velocity, and, done within the gravity well of the Tomin star, this creates a shimmering rift in time and space ahead of the starship as she starts an out-of-control tumble into the cosmic gap, hull groaning under the stress as she spirals out of normalspace and into ... somewhere else. ---- Sixmoon shows Marlan the display screen of his PDA, which shows an image of the clouds that is throbbing evenly throughout with vibrant dots of violet. "Silicates, with tiny power sources. Microscopic, and contained within an organic monocellular shell." He lowers the PDA, then gazes back at the sky. "Living raindrops, engineered for some purpose that I have not yet divined." ---- Sixmoon blinks, watching as the intertwined trees - they seem to have laced their upper branches together in order to maximize their options for mobility - move closer, blotting out much of the glowing crescent of Palisade in the starry sky. Two other moons can be seen flanking the visage of the three tree-things as they thump closer to the Athena. As the jabbing roots come thumping down, they tear gouges in the knee-high grass, ripping divots of soil and sod loose. The rumbling leviathans twirl in their massive, branch-undulating and root-plunging ballet, and get within about one hundred feet of the Athena, casting the offworlders' vessel in shadow before coming to a complete stop. Their branches untwine and they straighten. Their roots dig into the soil. Within a few moments, the trees look as if they have grown here. They seem inert, unmoving, immobile. And then the broad lower trunks of each tree begin to glow blue in symmetrical patterns that appear to be forming letters. The first trunk reads: "With." The second trunk reads: "us." The third trunk reads: "come." ---- ~We are in no danger,~ comes the mindspoken answer from the speaker as the four guardians get within about one hundred yards of the hovermaran, atop the mast of which crouches a man with a rifle and the intent to shoot at least one, but possibly all, of the Theorians. ~Our sentience is the least of what he recognizes.~ The hunter lowers the rifle briefly, staring down at the felinoids as they stalk into positions well within range of his gun and well out of the way of any bystanders. Easy targets! And yet ... they crouch. They stare. They stare up at him. Through him. "Bloody hell..." the hunter mutters, shaking off the cobwebs and bringing the rifle back up, sighting one of the Theorians below and putting his finger on the trigger. "Put you on my wall, I will..." Sweat beads on his forehead and his jaw clenches as he struggles to squeeze the trigger. "Mounted on a nice oak plaque..." The Theorians tilt their heads slowly. The hunter's eyes bug just a little, he coughs, twitches, drops the rifle and collapses in a heap on the crow's nest. The rifle clatters on the flattened roof of the hovermaran. ---- I'kkrikik bobs his rounded head, antennae flexing. "Of course, you are right. We should flee. For now." He turns, about to make his way up the ramp, when a rocket-launched plasma grenade hammers into the cockpit of the transport, shattering the transparisteel window and obliterating the controls and seats. A column of billowing flame and smoke rumbles through the interior of the transport, then vents out the airlock in lapping tongues of vermillion. The blast wave sends the old Odarite clattering on the landing pad, his walking stick rolling off to the right. The transport groans, its forward landing strut collapsing, and then the vessel drops with a CRUNCH! on the tarmac. Ak'kkkr'kkrik is also sent careening by the blast, his armor loudly scratching against the pavement of the landing pad. Loudly clicking a curse, the Odarite rises to his feet and quickly recovers his rifle. For the time being, he ignores the aged minister and focuses on the destroyed shuttle, gnashing his mandibles. Crouching low, he gazes about for the source of the grenade while approaching I'kkrikik. The source of the grenade appears to be one of four Odarites currently springing from the plasteel staircase that winds toward the upper pad. The other three are armed with dealbreaker blades, which they snikt! into separate lethal segments as they arc through the air before landing on the tarmac some twenty feet from the burning shuttle. I'kkrikik rolls over, mandibles clicking weakly as he grabs for the silver-capped staff with one of his right appendages and pushes himself up with the other three. He struggles to stand, shifting the staff to his left claws and resting his weight there as he watches the four Odarites bounding toward him and Ak. Ak'kkkr'kkrik moves to stand between I'kkrikik and the four aggressors, his mandibles slowly opening and closing. As the dealbreaker wielding Odarites grow closer, Akk's wings spread out and begin to buzz angrily, overwhelming the sound of the trio of pulseblasts speeding towards the first of them. With a swift arcing movement, the Odarite target shows one of the other handy uses of a dealbreaker blade: It actually deflects the pulse blasts. One zings over Ak'kkkr'kkrik's left shoulder and burns off the tip of I'kkrikik's left antennae. Another sizzles a grazing blow against Ak's right carapace. The third strikes the hull of the burning transport. ---- The scooter climbs the back of the wave as it rises, and the rider can clearly be heard yelling: "WAAAAAHOOOOOOOO!" as the vehicle lofts over the crest and arches through the air, toward the beach. He's safely past the dorsal fin within a few seconds. But as he starts to descend, still about one hundred yards out near a coral reef, a pair of jet black barbed tentacles wicker outward from the bottom of the wave as it begins to foam and collapse toward shore. The first tentacle snaps itself around the suddenly writhing hulk of a 20-foot-long black shark, which is lifted from the water and flung blithely toward the hoveryacht, clunking against the upper hull before it falls, thrashing, back into the sea. The second tentacle punches through the scooter rider's back, bursting a bloody hole through his muscle-shirt. He's yanked, shrieking, off the scooter, which keeps going through its arc while the rider is pulled back - oh-so-rapidly - into the roiling tumult of the fallen wave. A smear of blood is all that remains as evidence of the rider, save for the scooter itself, which putters on the shore and then goes silent. ---- The remaining two Nall end their patrol circuit near Urthmok and his watcher Nall. The Grimlahdi bartender watches curiously as the Zangali becomes encircled by the diminuitive reptiloids in their armor. Urthmok doesn't seem all that troubled by the rifle-wielding warriors. He swivels his snout to gaze at the Nall blocking Cedrict's path out of the tavern. He then looks toward LeBeau. "Urthmok hope offworlder jump good." His clawed hands grasp the front of his robe and pull it open, revealing a complicated arrangement of electronic clockworks and explosives - which detonates rather dramatically, blowing up anything within fifteen feet that can't jump out of range. ---- For a long pause, the Odarites encircling the Indefatigable crew simply crouch in silence, their metal weapons whispering in soft arcs as the creatures remain ready to lash out at any moment. Briefly, it seems they will be content to surround the offworlders in silence. But then, from the distance, comes a clickety-clackety tittering of echoes. That sound grows gradually louder. Finally, through the doors of spaceport skitter dozens of leaping and lunging Odarites, who start clinging to the rough rock walls of the cavern, climbing up toward the ceiling above the RNSers. Ultimately, they dangle like hundreds of chitinous mutant bats, their dealbreaker blades swinging like portable guillotines, glinting above as they wait to drop upon the offworlders at any second. ---- The fighter is first rolling sideways, but then another landing gear catches and tips the vessel up and over, so it starts a sort of decelerating cartwheel, flinging bits of schrapnel in all directions, until it finally settles into a slide with its last unbroken prong aiming toward customs. The vessel comes to a scritching halt with the sharpened prong jabbing just inches behind Sechek's fleeing back. ---- A new sound comes through the rumbling dissent of the wind: The whining roar of a starfighter's atmospheric turbines as it rockets above the dunes from the north, dodging the thrumming blasts of energy cannons fired by a similar fighter in hot pursuit. The fleeing fighter, bobbing and weaving between spiraling columns of sand whipped into a frenzy by the wind around Sharpeye and Whitestripe, dips its port wing drastically to avoid another shot from the pursuer. Too much dip, however. The wingtip catches in the crown of the dune and suddenly the fighter is spinning out of control, rolling and roaring, sending a rain of whistling shrapnel skyward as it is torn apart while shedding velocity in a fatal series of somersaults along the dunes. Within moments, the ravaged shell of the smoldering fighter is half-embedded in a not-too-distant dune, while the pursuing fighter zooms off into the night sky, its quarry neutralized. ---- It turns out that Volari is showy ... but not suicidal. A cluster of Phyrrian dart fighters are zooming on an intercept course while the Wolfsbane closes from behind and the Athena approaches from starboard, and that's when the Retreat shimmers out of view, reactivating its cloak. One of the three massive spidercraft opens fire on the Coreseeker missile ... but it's a glancing blow from a shot dissipated by the missile's entry into atmosphere, slightly altering trajectory. The Decimator Fleet dart fighters angle after the missile, but seconds spent chasing the invisible Strategic Retreat matter all too much. The missile comes into the middle of Task Matrix Central, bouncing and skidding, shedding metal skin and velocity until it impacts with a utility structure on the outskirts of the city and detonates. The explosion, although not as traumatic as a core penetration, is still massive. A rippling energy wave roars outward from the blastpoint, obliterating much of the city. ---- The shots fired by Dave, Lucius, and Jeff manage to connect with enough damaging force that the two rampaging reapers coming toward the crowd are rendered defunct. That rendering doesn't do anything about stopping their forward momentum, however, as they catch on their threshing cylinders and flip end over end toward the group. Hidden Jaguar makes a run for the old man, but doesn't make it in time. It looks like the old man is about to be chewed up or have to leap to his death in the canyon. Then Ace manages a trick of telekinesis to disable one of the four harvesters chasing the Qua, sends it rolling left so that it clangs into a neighboring harvester. This leads to a domino effect that knocks the other harvesters off their fatal trajectory with the old man, who dives to ground and covers his head in futility, waiting for death. It doesn't come. Instead, the reapers go tumbling over the edge and plummet into the shadows of the canyon. category:OtherSpace Memorable Quotations